The present invention relates to a diving buoyancy compensator and, more particularly, to a jacket or a vest for buoyancy compensation or stabilization and emergency flotation of a diver during diving.
As well known, the buoyancy compensator is used as auxiliary means for buoyancy compensation or stabilization and emergency flotation of a diver during scuba diving. Such compensator is generally provided with a power inflator and a safety valve device. The power inflator includes an inlet button, an exhaust button and a mouthpiece, and is connected through a first inflation hose to the compensator, on one side, and through a second inflation hose, to an air tank carried by the diver on the back on the other side. The diver may depress the inlet button to supply air stream from the air tank through the second inflation hose and the first inflation hose into the compensator and depress the exhaust button to exhaust air from the componsator through the first inflation hose. Obviously, it is also possible to make air supply by expiration of the diver from the mouthpiece through the first inflation hose into the compensator. The safety valve device is adapted to be automatically opened when the compensator is excessively filled with air to exhaust such excessive quantity of air and includes a mechanism which may be manually operated by the diver in the case of emergency also for such exhaustion.
In the conventional compensator of this type, the first inflation hose of the power inflator is connected at its base end to one shoulder of the compensator and the safety valve device is carried on the other shoulder of the compensator. And this safety valve device is provided with a pull rope of which the one end is directly connected to the safety valve device, the intermediate portion extends along a collar of the compensator and the opposite end is hung down so that this rope may be pulled down to open the safety valve device and thereby to achieve exhaustion.
With the conventional compensator of this type, the compensator must be provided not only with a port (air inlet) to which the first inflation hose of the power inflator is connected at its base end but also another port (air outlet) in which the safety valve device is mounted. With a consequence, provision of the port exclusively for mounting of the safety valve device correspondingly complicates manufacturing of the compensator and often causes various accidents such as air leakage and tearing to occur from this port exclusively for mounting of the safety valve device. Accordingly, it is desired to minimize such a region of the compensator to be worked.
A principal object of the present invention is to provide a diving buoyancy compensator so improved that the air inlet port to which the first inflation hose of the power inflator essential to such compensator is connected at the base end may be utilized for mounting of the safety valve device.